The film version of Black Magic seemed to have set off a wave of let’s-go-back-and-read-that-again, which washed John P. Marquand’s 1936 novel Think Fast, Mr. Moto up onto the shores of my consciousness.

Marquand won a Pulitzer for a book nobody reads anymore, and I’m afraid he’ll generally be remembered more for Moto than for Apley. At that, Think Fast is readable enough, fast enough, mildly surprising in its way, and readily forgettable.

Something about a Nice Young Man coming to Hawaii to untangle the affairs of a distant, hostile and beautiful relative, getting enmeshed with crooks and smugglers and all that sort of thing. It’s the kind of book that can be flatteringly described as Vapid; not bad, really, but remarkably unremarkable.

I particularly liked the way the characters seemed pulled out of Hollywood B-movies. When Marquand pits his hero and heroine against an amusing gangster, Chinese warlord, sallow Russian and the redoubtable Mr. Moto, one can’t help but picture Bob Cummings, Dolores Del Rio, Lloyd Nolan, Warner Oland, Mischa Auer — and of course, Peter Lorre.

One thing I found rather disturbing, though: when Marquand wrote this thing, Japan was raping China; they were doing to China what Hitler did to the Jews, in one of the most brutal invasions in history. But in Think Fast, Mr. Moto, the bad guys are all plotting to smuggle supplies to the disparate elements in China fighting the Japanese, and our nice young man helps Mr. Moto put a stop to all this to keep his family from scandal.

Marquand based Moto on a polite Japanese poilce agent who was assigned to follow him around when he visited Japan, and cheerfully admitted he wrote the books to feed the baby. Still, he cared enough about them to write one more after the war when he didn’t need the money (Right You Are Mr. Moto, aka Stopever Tokyo).

I’m not sure we can critisize his moral compass since while the rape of China was well known at the time, the extent of Japanese atrocity was far less known. It has only been in the last two decades some of the horrors the Japanese army committed have come out, and in some cases only because former Japanese soldiers came forward to confess and ask forgivness.

To most in the West China was the new wild west (or wild east), with warlords, Japanese soldiers, and Western adventurers knocking around looking for adventure. This was reflected not just in Marquand’s books, but James Norman’s novels about General Manuel Quiroga a Mexican adventurer working for a Chinese warlord, and Charles Booth’s The General Died at Dawn. Movies like Too Hot to Handle, China Seas, the film of Booth’s book, China Girl, and serials like The Fighting Devil Dogs as well as comic strips like Terry and the Pirates saw China as a place for adventure, with an occassional nod to the suffering of the Chinese people. even after the war, films like The Left Hand of God, Keys to the Kingdom, The Mountain Road, and Inn of the Sixth Happiness didn’t fully understand the horror that had gone on.

Even a really sincere film like Dragon Seed ended up underplaying the suffering and horror visited by the Japanese on the Chinese people, emphasizing the nobility of the people over the horrors visited on them.

Complaining that Marquand didn’t write about the horrors of the rape of China is about like complaining that Helen MacInnes Above Suspicion or Manning Coles A Drink to Yesterday didn’t deal with the suffering of Jews in Germany adequately. Few people suspected how bad it was or would get, even some who were in danger themselves. Even films that came closer to the truth than most like Escape, Once Upon an Honeymoon, Pimpernel Smith, and To Be Or Not To Be treated concentration camps as an opening for adventure or even comedy. It’s not until 1944’s The Seventh Cross that a film comes anywhere near suggesting what was really happening in Germany, and even as powerful as that film and the book it was based on are they don’t begin to suggest what would be found when the Allies first reached the gates of real concentration camps.

It is easy to look back and condemn or shake our heads, but how many of us really knew what was happening in Croatia in the nineties, or how bad it is now in parts of Africa. I haven’t noticed any signifigant lessening of diamond sales despite the crimes committed to provide them. It strikes me that worrying about Marquand’s moral compass in 2009 is unproductive. Maybe we should be concerned about our own.

Dan’s been on vacation the last couple of weeks, and I’ve been running his reviews while he’s away. He should be back soon.

So I’m not speaking for him, but I both agree and disagree with you, David. Morality is always clearer in hindsight, but I think more people knew what was going on in times past but didn’t always have the courage to say so. Nor did they have a platform to make any difference if they did.

I certainly don’t know what Marquand (and others) knew or didn’t know, but I think he was in a position to know more than the general public. Maybe not, and he ended up choosing the wrong side, at least for a while.

Without knowing more, I wouldn’t care to challenge Marquand on it, but as it stands, until I do more know more, the story as described by Dan is enough to make me feel uneasy about it.

— Steve

PS. Sitting here thinking at the computer about Manning Coles, I’m not convinced that your analogy is totally appropriate. Yes and no, once again. Tommy Hambledon’s adventures may have kept him away from the horrors of the concentration camps, but he did know (eventually) who the bad guys were, didn’t he?

I see where the problem may lie, and let me explain, because I certainly wasn’t taking any shots at Dan Stumpf, and based on the one book, Think Fast Mr. Moto, and likely the movies, you and he seem to be under the impression that Marquand chose the Japanese side, and that’s simply not true.

In this book it’s true a Chinese warlord is the villain, but in most of the Moto books Mr. Moto is presented as an active Japanese agent who regrets his countries actions and sees the coming war with the US and regrets that even more. As often as not the protagonist of the Moto novels is a rather innocent American who is trying to achieve our ends and who is either checkmated or comes to a draw with Mr. Moto.

Marquand does portray Moto as an admirable figure, but he is quite clear about the motives and actions of the Japanese government in China and elsewhere in the Pacific. Marquand in no way presents the Japanese government in a sympathetic light, and he makes it clear as the series goes on that war is imminent between Japanese expanionism and the West.

In my reference to Manning Coles, I only meant to refer to the one novel, Drink to Yesterday that opens with an amnesiac Tommy Hambledon having risen to be the Nazi Party member chief of the Berlin police. Yes, he does get a thump on the head and go back to his ways as a British agent, but I have to say his having become an active Nazi and rising to so prominent a role in the hierarchy is more disturbing than Marquand’s admiration for Moto as a man while decrying the activities of the Japanese government. Or would be if the Coles could have had any idea what was really happening in Germany — or would happen. They couldn’t, and the only reason Hambledon rises to power in their novel is a sly take on the natural superiority of an Englishman and a comment on Hammbledon’s brains and abilities. Noting political was intended beyond that.

But I can see if you have only read Think Fast Mr. Moto where you might get the impression Marquand was choosing the Japanese side in the Chinese conflict.

And to be fair, even some noted Sinologists weren’t aware of what was happening in China. I went to college in the home town of Claire Chennault, the creator of the Flying Tigers, and knew his widow and many ex OSS types who had been Sinologists for US Intelligence in the war and after, and even they admitted that they didn’t know the extent of Japanese atrocities simply because the Japanese left no witnesses. Even one Chinese who had been on the Long March with Mao said that all they knew were vague rumors that were often dismissed as improbable, and they witnessed and suffered some Japanese atrocity. After the war our own government suppressed some of this as Japan became an ally, and Russia and China a threat.

But the idea that Marquand was some sort of apologist for the Japanese in China or anywhere in the Pacfic is simply not true. He portrays Moto as a good man, but one who chooses duty over personal honor, and his point is clear that men like Moto who kept silent were part of the tragedy. This is particularly true in the last Moto novel before the war, Last Laugh, Mr. Moto (1941) which even ends with Moto outwitted by a woman.

“It made Bob Bolles wonder what he was really thinking, whether everything in Mr. Moto’s world was either very nice or very serious and whether Mr. Moto was ever anything but very glad or very sorry. Mr. Moto’s reactions could not always be as simple as that, but he was completely sure of himself, and sure what he wished to do. He must have learned that from his way of life …”

Moto at the end of the novel even outwits himself because he is eager to get the Americans away before his own people arrive. He knows how they will behave and what the fate of the Americans will be. At one point in Right Your Are, Mr. Moto the American agent hero even uses a racial slur against Moto, who is still doing his governments bidding — even with an ally battling the same enemy (the Russians in this case).

I would argue Marquand’s portrait of Moto consistently owes more to Somerset Maugham’s Ashenden than to most popular literature. Moto isn’t a villain, nor is he the protagonist. He is at best an admirable antagonist who sometimes allows his affection for Americans to cloud his judgment.

As for the evil Chinese warlord in Think Fast Mr. Moto, it is far from an exaggeration. Such men committed atrocities against their own allies during the Japanese occupation and later during the war, fighting as much among themselves as the enemy. If anything Marquand was a bit ahead of his time in suggesting that strange allies sometimes arise in complex situations. Any veteran of the Chinese theater during that period could tell you that knowing who was the enemy was sometimes harder than actually fighting them since so many groups, the Japanese, Nationalists, Communists, and out and out bandits were competing for power, food, and loot. At worst Marquand only presents a fairly honest look at the Chinese problem. It wasn’t always as black and white as most of what went on in Europe, and even in Europe it could get complicated as when the Finns allied with the Germans to fight a Soviet invasion of Finland. I really think the only moral compass you might attack in Marquand’s case would be if you objected to him writing popular fiction to make money, and I for one would never complain there.

In the Winter War 1939-1940 Finland had more allies than just Germany (including Britain), but it was actually the Continuance War 1941-1944 in which Finland and Germany formed a coalition.

And one might argue that Finland actually attacked Soviet Union – even though it’s true that the Soviets had bombed Helsinki, but the troops attacked from Finland’s side, and even though Finland seized land that had been occupied by the Russians in the Winter War, they also attacked deep in Soviet Union, taking pieces of land that had never been part of Finland.

But, yeah, it’s complicated. There’s been a lot of national discussion over this in the last few years, as new archive findings have come out, such as Gestapo working in Finland, which had been formerly denied.

Thanks for the further info on the Finnish campaign, it’s not really mentioned much in American histories of the war, though generally the Finns come out looking fairly good despite allying with Germany. I guess when you are fighting Stalin …

No war, not even that one. is all black and white. The Cossacks who fought with Germany and ended up sent back to Stalin after the war were another people caught between Stalin’s brutality and what the Germans represented. They made the wrong choice, but they suffered terribly for it. Similar things happened in the Ukraine as well, and we should all remember the land grab Stalin made for Poland and the Polish officer corps he imprisoned and then executed. It in no way lessens Hitler’s evil that some of his enemies weren’t pristine.

Even in Italy and France the in fighting between Communist and other resistance groups sometimes got in the way of fighting the Germans. In China the infighting between rival groups sometimes seemed more vicious than the fight against Japan, and seriously hampered the Allied effort.

With the clear eyes of hindsight it all seems fairly simple, but in the heat of war bad choices get made. It’s nice to see Finland and other countries still caring enough to discuss it and hash it out in the clear light of day. Somehow I don’t think many of us would blame Finland for takng advantage of the Soviets all things considered, but it is nice to know Finland is taking a long hard look at itself. We all need to do that sometimes, this country and others.

Juri brings up an interesting subject that has fascinated me for some time, the Winter War of 1939-1940 between Finland and Russia. Despite being a small nation with a small army compared to Russia, Finland in the early months of the war gave an amazingly good fight against Russia and caused high Russian casualties.

Some WW II histories have pointed out that this is why Germany decided to invade Russia in 1941. Because the Russians performed so poorly against a small army like Finland’s, Hitler assumed the German army would quickly defeat the Soviet armies. This might have happened except that Hitler made the same mistake that Napoleon made. He underestimated the Russian winter and the Russian will to keep fighting despite several million casualities.

As for Finland looking fairly good.. well, it was allowed in Finland to beat up prisoners of war in camps, and Finland had its own share of concentration camps where they put for example the Soviet citizens that had moved to the Carelian areas occupied by the Soviets in the Winter War – or Finnish Communists (and their whole families) that had escaped Finland’s anti-Leftist campaigns. Has to be mentioned though that these people weren’t killed voluntarily, they were just kept in a poor shape. Finland also gave some Jews over to Nazi Germany during the war.

We also had our own Oskar Schindler, one Algot Niska, a smuggler who shipped Jews over to Sweden’s side over the sea. (I forget what the sea is called in English.)

As for Finland beating the hell out of the Soviet army in the Winter War, yes, that sure was a wonder. It’s semi-officially known as the Wonder of the Winter War. The Finnish troops used tactics not known to the Soviets, so it was easy for a smallish group of men to win more powerful Soviet troops.

I think what happens with the Finnish question is in part the David and Goliath thing — we all love an underdog, and also most of us are only vaguely aware of Finland’s role in the war. In most histories of WWII in the west it’s little more than a footnote.

Juri brings up some disturbing points, but the sad fact is that there were things done in just about every country, and even in Denmark, where the government made a real effort to save the countries Jews, there were individuals who didn’t shine.

The Russo/Finnish border was always contested and the Finns long had to contend with the ambitions of the Russian bear on their doorstep, and when at the end of WWII the west turned it’s ire toward Russia I think it was just easier to forget any mistakes the Finn’s might have made, and build up the legend of the tough hard fighting Finns while ignoring some of the harsher realities. That ‘bodyduard of lies’ Churchill said the truth needed to be protected by in wartime, is still pretty formidible all these years later. There are still secret files that will be sealed another fifty to one hundred years, so likely none of us will ever know all the secrets.

Few were blameless in the war, and few made 100% perfect decisions, but considering the stakes and the enemy and the size of their crimes many things were overlooked that probably shouldn’t have been. Even when the enemy is as clearly evil as the Nazi there can be gray areas on both sides, and just as there were good Germans there were bad guys on the other side. Today more than ever we ought to be aware that even good men can do bad things, and bad men aren’t always limited to the enemy.

But if we in the west have simplified the Finnish role in the war it’s nice to know the Finns know their own history and don’t mind straightning us out. I hope we can be as honest about our own mistakes. History may not repeat itself, but the mistakes men make do.